l tender mind,
especially as I am not ignorant with what facility the external
senses yield to seduction. I have therefore sent you this treatise,
not only as a monitor, but even as an importunate and sometimes
impudent dun, who in this turn of life may convoy you beyond the
rocks of adulation; and may not merely offer you advice, but confine
you to the path which you have entered, and if you should chance to
deviate may reprehend you and recall your steps. If you obey this
monitor you will ensure tranquillity to yourself and your family,
and will transmit your glory to the most distant posterity."

That James VI should be described as disliking flattery and despising
authority, if not enforced by solid argument, is strange to hear; and
that he should be so boldly called upon to consider a plea for national
freedom and a constitutional rule, as the chief guarantee of
tranquillity and honour, is still more remarkable. Certainly it was not
from Buchanan that he got those high pretensions of divine right, which
had never flourished in Scotland; although by a not uncommon paradox the
most faithful partisans of the family which was brought to ruin by these
pretensions were found in the northern kingdom. Very different were the
doctrines upon which Buchanan nourished the royal child. James
acknowledged afterwards not ungracefully the distinction of his
instructor in letters. "All the world," he says, "knows that my master
George Buchanan was a great master in that faculty." But his opinions in
politics found no favour in his pupil's eyes when James emerged from his
youthful subjection and began to show his native mettle. At twelve,
individuality in that respect would scarcely be developed, and a
reverence for his tutor's sharp tongue and ready hand would keep the
King from premature opposition.

While this work was going on in the comparative quiet of Stirling,
Scotland was lost in the turmoil of one of the most wild and terrible
portions of her history. It is indeed rather from the glimpse we have of
the little royal household in the foreground of all that strife and
bloodshed, the Lady Mar in her matronly dignity, Buchanan in his furred
gown among his books, and the clamour and laughter of the two boys
interrupting the quiet, that we can believe in any semblance of peace or
domestic life at all in the distracted country. The Regent Lennox, the
King's grandfather, was killed under the ver